Margo: Went the distance, now she's not gonna stop

Saturday

Nov 17, 2012 at 1:30 PM

Margo Allen had a normal life until a scary diagnosis forced her to rise up to the challenge.

By Cheeto Barreraeditor@ridgecrestca.com

They stacked the odds against her, but Margo Allen kept her focus and had the will to survive.Surrounded by her family and friends, Allen is fighting a diagnosis no one wants to receive and hoping that she can count herself as a survivor, but the journey is far from over.Perhaps the best thing about being diagnosed with a primitive neuroectodermal tumor (PNET) was just how quickly it progressed.One month she thought she just had an intestinal blockage, scheduling an appointment to get it checked out. The next month, her stomach bloated making her look like she was pregnant, saw a doctor at USC and was in surgery the next day.That set off six months of chemotherapy which left Allen weak and susceptible to minor but deadly infections.All of a sudden her life went from being a mother of two girls with a job on base to someone who couldn't even vacuum her house, do her own dishes or even change her daughter Emma's diapers.But everything was happening so fast that Allen didn't have much time to think just what the diagnosis meant."I like it was so quick because I was actively doing something," Allen said. "I was actively trying to do something to beat this."The fight, however, wasn't easy.Allen said it was difficult to adjust to not being as active as she used to be.When little things like normal house chores became too much, things got a little daunting for Allen."There's a lot of things you can't do that you just take for granted," Allen said.Because the chemo depleted her immune system as it fought the cancer, she couldn't do something as normal as changing a diaper because her body couldn't fight the germs off."We couldn't walk into a grocery store without wiping everything down with a sanitation wipe," Allen said.But thanks to good friends and her strong family support, Allen was able to keep focused on the positives of keeping up the fight.Oddly, now that she has finished all the courses of chemo her body will let her take and she is waiting to see if she in cancer free, the antsiness is kicking in."Now is the weird part," Allen said. On Nov. 7, her doctor told her that she was in "maintenance mode" where they will monitor Allen for a while to see if the cancer returns or if she is in the clear.She will go in for checks at six weeks, three months and six months to assess just how effective the chemo was.If the doctors find something, Allen said, they will have to assess a new course of treatment. If things are clear, they will continue to monitor her in the coming years."Now I don't have anything to actively do, it's weird," Allen said. "I've been actively fighting this and now it's the waiting game."In six weeks, Allen will receive a CA-125 blood test which is the test for ovarian cancer. If her blood levels are within normal range, she will continue to monitor the situation."It's just the waiting game now. Am I really free? Am I really clear?" Allen said. "This is the hard part for me. The fighting wasn't the hard part, I had tons to do. In a situation you don't have a lot of control over, you at least have something you feel like you're doing."The fight focused her mind, now the waiting is proving difficult."It was all about moving forward, step-by-step trying to get rid of it," Allen said. "It was about getting forward and past it."She said the experience was "surreal.""I was going through this, but some times it didn't click because it is happening so quick," Allen said.The cancer is an aggressive one, so if it comes back, it will probably do so within a year.Allen was a regular mother of two daughters — Kaliegh, 10, and Emma, 2 — with a job on base.She and her family moved back to Ridgecrest from Bakersfield to be closer to family and to take a job with MWR on base in August, 2011.Then a problem crept up.She noticed her cycle was off in February and it continued into March.Allen said she thought it was just constipation as an irregular cycle was not unusual for her.That prompted her to see her OBGYN in Ridgecrest who also thought it was just a blockage.Before she got into the office, however, her stomach ballooned and made her look seven or eight months pregnant.As a precaution, Allen's Ridgecrest doctor put her through some scans and found a mass on her ovary the size of a basketball.Allen was refered to a doctor at the University of Southern California.When she went to her appointment, the doctor at USC told her she would be in surgery the next day."(The doctor) looked at me and said, you don't have to go home today, right?" Allen said.What she had was PNET, which is typically a cancer that develops in children or teenages, but does hit adults as well.PNET is a type of sarcoma that is relatively rare and it hits adults harder than it does youth who have almost twice the survival rate.Allen said she didn't remember exactly how big the mass was, but said it was described to her that it was as big as the surgeon's head."To make you look seven months pregnant, it had to be pretty big," Allen said.Two weeks after the surgery, she started chemo on a two-week schedule.After her body couldn't recover from the poison, she was switched to a two-week, three-week schedule.Normally, the treatment is a 14-course run but adults have a harder time going through the full course.Adding to the "fun" of the chemo, was immune boosting shots that didn't always guarantee that she wouldn't still have problems.Any fever above 100.4, she had to go to the doctor because any infection could prove to be deadly.In fact, Allen did get two such fevers and had to be put in isolation.But most of that is behind her for now.Life is sort of returning to normal.She did dishes again, finally.At one point during this conversation, her daughter Emma hit her head and needed her mommy to make it all better.Allen said Emma is been very resilient and adaptive through the whole ordeal.She has gotten so used to her mom not having hair that when Allen tried on a wig in anticipation of eventually going back to work, Emma didn't recognize her.Her other daughter is 10 and is at the age where children know what cancer is and it has been an open journey to help counter the fears and worries that her daughter has.Kids at school know cancer is a killer, but Allen said she and her husband have tried to be as open as they can.Perhaps the biggest thing she's learned is just how good her friends and family are.From offering support, to house cleanings and everything in between, she said she has been blown away by just how loved she is.